It is all obvious or trivial except…

@RichardJMurphy: Husband of GP says GPs should be well paid shocker!

From his published accounts at least it would appear that Mrs. Richard J Murphy brings in more than 50% of the household income.

The largest private provider of NHS out-of-hours GP services

Mmm, so we\’re talking about GPs then, yes?

And it’s called a total lack of understanding on the part of government and private companies that health services are nothing like supermarkets and that those who have to provide them 24 hours a day have to be very well cared for themselves if society is going to get the service it needs.

My word, man who relies upon the income of a GP calls for GPs to be very well paid.

Now that is a surprise, isn\’t it children? Just such an astonishing call to action.

No doubt, soon enough, we\’ll have calls that the country\’s leading economics blogger should be subsidised by a charity. After all, what\’s £35k a year for someone to write a blog, eh?

Too right. I had dinner the other night with my old family GP. Real old school doctor, of the ‘House calls and 24/7 service to his patients’ type. In his late 80s now. We discussed the NHS and he is appalled at the lack of care GPs show to their patients nowadays, and how difficult it is to even get an appointment to see one in their surgery. The concept of getting one to visit you at home is less likely than Elvis turning up at the local chippy. And all this ‘service’ for a salary many times what he was paid 25 or 30 years ago.

yes…all part of the Blair-Brown reforms that seem to have been designed to increase the costs of the NHS as a form of economic blackkmail to the UK. Pay or die. Meanwhile, GPs get a colossal payrise for working fewer hours. And if I need to visit a doctor, it is easier to get an appointment with a practice nurse than a doctor. Not that it matters. The doctors know nothing and I can at least tell the nurse what medication I need, based on 50 years of experience as a chronic sufferer from eczema.